OldGrayGary

Hi again


I looked at the availability of adapters & their ratings . . . and can't say that I'm all that impressed with the USB adapters. From personal experience, I've used wired ethernet USB adapters that worked without any problems. On the wireless side, I've yet to see a PC-Card device that doesn't work like it's supposed to - they almost all work without any problems. But the PC-Card devices cost more, and of course are limited to use with laptops. USB seems to be more hit-and-miss with wireless -- I suspect part of that has to do with the fragile nature of the connection itself. So .... if you can find a PC-Card wireless adapter on sale for less than $50 that has a bona-fide Vista driver available - that might be the least headache. Here in So. Calif., cheap USB wireless adapters go as low as $11 on sale (value-line imports from a company called AirLink) .. but I've yet to see any feedback on how effective they are.
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How about a couple more attempts to get your TrueMobile Device happy again? It worked before, and - assuming that the device isn't damaged - there should be a way of getting it to work again.

1) QuickFix Try:
You've tried several things ... but I don't think you've tried System Restore yet. Give it a go, using a restore point from the time period when it was working well.

2) Call Dell:
Strangely enough, there's absolutely no information I could find as to what wireless chipset is used in the USB version of the Dell TrueMobile 1300 (the miniPCI & PC-Card versions use Broadcom chips, but the driver updates for those devices specifically state NOT FOR USB). So see if Dell support can give you that information. I almost guarantee that the first-tier of Dell support won't know ... they are generally less-informed than the higher level techs. You might have to ask to escalate your question to a higher-level tech. IF you can find out what chipset the device uses, you could then visit the chipset makers website to see if a generic Vista-compatible driver is available for USB devices using that chip.

3) If none of the above steps help ... think back to what wireless connection utility you were using when the adapter was working well. If it was the Xp version of the Dell Wireless connection utility, try disabling the Zero Configuration Utility in Vista, and then reinstalling the Dell utility & try it. If the utility that worked best earlier was the Vista Zero Configuration, then you'd uninstall the other utilities. Try to work back to what was working before.

Also run some malware scans on as thorough settings as you can. Malware can disrupt network settings.

Best of luck
. . . Gary